Ill-considered communist revival
By Paul M. Weyrich
web posted October 20, 2003
An item in Parade magazine earlier this month caught the eye of
my colleague Jerris Leonard, who passed it on to me, knowing
of my interest in the subject. The report said that the Communist
Party is growing again in Russia. Last year, 18,000 new recruits
joined, 80 percent of whom are under 40 years of age. The
reasons given were to "protest current conditions" and because
of their "dislike of [Vladimir] Putin and Company."
It is understandable why older people might have found the
Communist system attractive. They were brought up under it and
were looking forward to retirement on a pension, which was
worth something, even though there was little they could buy. But
to have young people attracted to the Communists is something
else. Most of them have little remembrance of the era when the
Soviet system was still going strong. Back then, Putin was an
official of the feared KGB. What an irony for younger people to
join the Communists to protest Putin.
In any case, for all its difficulties, Russia today is a far different
place than it was when Gorbachev took over. While the
government has curbed independent network television, the
number of independent print media outlets is legion. There are
also independent radio stations and out in fairly remote places
even independent cable channels. When the Communists ran
things, you read and heard only what the government wanted
you to hear. Broadcasts from outside Russia were jammed. You
couldn't even buy an independent foreign publication outside
Moscow. Whereas there used to be constant shortages of
almost everything, you can buy in Russia today whatever you can
buy in the USA.
People can travel without getting the government's permission.
They can even leave the country permanently if they wish. That
was not possible under Communism.
Russians have the right to worship as they please. Under the
Communists, all but a handful of churches were closed. Today,
thousands and thousands of churches have re-opened.
If these younger people want to have an idea of what their
country was like before Gorbachev began the process that
eventually led to the fall of the Communists, they might visit
Cuba. There the people live today as Russians lived less than
two decades ago. Or if they would like an idea of what it was
like to live under Stalin, especially in Ukraine, where Stalin
deliberately starved 30 million people to death to make these
very independent people conform to collectivism in agriculture, a
visit to North Korea would be enlightening. There the
government starves its own people so what little money there is
can be put into their weapons programs. These young Russians
should not just be tourists in Cuba and North Korea. No, they
should live like the ordinary people live, if you can call their
existence living.
There are some other young people who would benefit by living
in Cuba and North Korea. They currently reside on American
college campuses. ABC network reporter and commentator
John Stossel recently returned from a speaking tour of major
colleges. He was profoundly shaken by the sympathy for
Communist ideas he found there and even more shaken by the
hatred for America he experienced. These young leftists have no
idea what it is like to live under totalitarian rule. They are free to
hold their anti-American views. During the more than 70 years of
Communist rule, a young Russian who openly expressed hatred
for his own country and pro-American sentiments would at best
be sentenced to hard labor in some Siberian camp; or he might
be confined to a mental hospital where mind-altering drugs
would be used on him as an experiment; or he might be tried for
treason in a trial, the outcome of which would not be determined
by a jury of his peers but rather by the wishes of the Communist
Party. Found guilty, he would be shot. That was happening well
into even the Gorbachev Era.
Meanwhile, where is Hollywood in all of this? There are so many
incredible stories of daring adventure and heroism from the
Soviet Era in Russia that would be better and more realistic than
any of the nonsense they now grind out year after year. Movies
produced here are often hits in Russia. Well, movies of what it
was like to live in a vicious, poverty-stricken country where there
was no freedom or human rights rank up with Nazi Germany for
potential "entertainment," -- only the Soviet period was more
recent and involved millions more people. The Jews were hated
by the Soviet authorities every bit as much as the Nazis hated
them. They may not have put them in ovens but they made them
complete outcasts of society, blaming virtually all of the ills their
system produced on the Jewish people.
One day young people both in Russia and the United States may
come to understand what Communism was and is all about. Let
us hope and pray that, for this country and Russia, it won't be
too late.
Paul M. Weyrich is Chairman and CEO of the Free Congress
Foundation (www.freecongress.org).
Enter Stage Right -- http://www.enterstageright.com